NCAA Football 12

Deep Inside NCAA Football 12

This year's installment throws a number of new features at its Dynasty mode, and we tell you exactly how you can make your mark.

DYNASTY MODE

Custom Conferences

Instead of just being able to swap teams between conferences, now you can expand or shrink conferences from four to sixteen teams

You can set conference rules from allowing Thursday games, protected rivals, division names/alignment, scheduling of conference games, location of the conference championship game, and more

You can also edit the bowl tie-ins, so the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl could not include the Big 12 or remove tie-ins altogether and just go off of straight BCS rankings. You could even make it so independents like Notre Dame don't have a tie-in to any bowls, which sounds like a great plan

No conference creation or BCS playoff-style tournament

Conferences can be changed from year to year

Create a Coach/Coaching Carousel

Start out as either a head coach (use an existing coach or one create one from scratch) or coordinator. Coordinators naturally only call and run plays for their side of the ball. Coordinators will still recruit, however

Can edit any coaches/players that are existing on the disc. This can be posted as a file online for others to download

The game wants to replicate the coaching carousel of the NCAA, so your contract status and goals will be closely monitored from year to year. Depending on the school, you'll get goals like getting a bowl birth, having a top recruiting class, winning a national championship, and much more. For coordinators, goals will be stat based

Your coaching prestige and job security change from week to week, so you'll have to ride the rollercoaster all season, and this also affects your recruiting. If you're on the hot seat, for example, players may be less inclined to sign onto your program

AI coaches will retire, get fired, and hop from job to job, and this will affect the entire coaching landscape. The AI will hire coaches based on things like whether a candidates is an alum or not, coaching style, etc. You will also get offers while you are currently employed

Although you can start out as a coordinator, when you are a head coach you do not hire your coordinator positions

Commish can advance the week from the web – but only if you pay a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points

You can super-sim your games versus the CPU on the web – including
calling plays, modifying your depth chart, and more. You can also pause
the game at any time, sim forward a quarter, etc. Again, however, this
will cost you a one-time fee of $2.99 or 240 Microsoft Points

Both of the above browser features can be bought in one Commissioner
Pack for $6.99/560 MP, and the pack also includes the ability to be
commish to up to five dynasties

Misc.

Custom Playbooks: Add remove plays and formations at will. You can set up exactly how you see your playbook, from grouping all medium passes to putting all play-action plays together, and more. This is not sortable via your NCAA browser page

Recruiting in Dynasty mode has been tuned, but not changed greatly

For more on NCAA, check out our screens and trailers below (including this story on the game's zone defense), as well as our previous preview detailing some of the gameplay changes.

Haven't bought one of the NCAA games since the 09 one came out...guess I'm going to snap that streak. This year's game looks to mark the end of my summer social life, as I'll probably be playing this for eternity.

How about EA Tiburon adds more to the teambuilder creation set. At least let us use red for field colors, Eastern Washington has a red field after all. And how about letting people set their teams stats overall, instead of having to do every player manually. Also, have some stock stadiums so that when you have a created team and they play in a small dome, there isn't an "IDAHO" sign plastered across the far wall. Immersion breaking that one is. Similarly, why can't we set a school's rivals?

I feel like I saw a longer video on G4 detailing more about the game...this is a huge improvement over what was already a great football game. This will probably be the go-to again for anyone who enjoys the sport, as Madden is NOT getting this much attention to detail.

Looks like Madden will once again be outdone by NCAA football. I actually enjoy Madden about 5 years ago but they turned into utter trash since the current gen of consoles have been out. NCAA has been substantially better most years and it looks like this year will be no different. Ugh. I want to play with NFL teams not college. If only Madden didn't suck.